Learn more about Startup Weekend events in our Event FAQs. You can browse through various FAQs, watch a video, and see how genuinely useful and fun we aim to be!

At Startup Weekend: Women’s Edition we’re especially excited to support women entrepreneurs and are looking for any interested women to join us! Have an idea to pitch? Want to get exposure to local experts? Just want to learn more about startups? Join us!

That’s great! Volunteering is a wonderful way to see how SW:WE works if you don’t have a full weekend free to participate. We love to have great folks working along side of us to register people, organize the delicious food, and make sure every guest can find the final presentations. Please let us know you volunteering preferences (Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday Evening, Sunday morning or Sunday evening etc.) by emailing us at: portlandmainewomen [at] startupweekend [dot] org or by filling out this form.

Startup Weekend: Women’s Edition is an intensive weekend experience that will be held June 12th-14th, 2015 at the Maine College of Art in downtown Portland for​​ 70+ women participants, judges, coaches, and organizers. Participants will gather on Friday night to network and pitch business ideas, form teams around the best ideas, then race all weekend to develop the ideas into functioning businesses.

Here’s how it works:

Friday- Arrival

When you arrive at the MECA Cafe on Friday evening, you will be greeted by our volunteers and walked through the registration process. Once all participants have arrived, we will begin Startup Weekend: Women’s Edition with a brief introduction and Initial Pitches.

Friday– The Initial Pitch

Next, we will gather as a group and participants who come prepared with a business idea (not necessary!) will deliver rapid-fire (60-second) business pitches to the audience (typically about two-thirds of the crowd will come prepared with a business idea). Participants then vote for their favorite (most interesting and most viable) ideas using stickers to identify their top 3 choices. Finally, we form teams around the most popular ideas and begin discussion.

Saturday/Sunday morning– The MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

When you arrive on Saturday, you will begin work with your team to build a foundation for a startup business. You will work together as a team to focus on customer development, validating ideas, and designing prototypes with the help of experienced mentors (our coaches).

Sunday Evening- The Final Pitch

On Sunday evening, each team will present their refined pitch to a panel of judges and an audience of peer supporters. The judges offer valuable feedback and choose one winning team who will walk away with a host of prizes including business and financial services from the weekend’s participating coaches.

We are grateful for your support and for your desire to help make Startup Weekend SW Bangor a fantastic event.

After taking an honest look at our prospects for delivering a top-notch experience, we have decided to postpone SW Bangor until February 6-8, 2015 in order to allow for greater participation. Stay tuned to maine.up.co for more information.

If you would like to participate in a SW between now and then, check out Startup Weekend Auburn, November 14-16, 2014.

We will be contacting your very soon to discuss transferring/refunding your ticket to the new event dates.

Thanks again for your interest and help. We look forward to serving again in the near future.

This is part of the global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs, with events in over 100 countries and 580 cities around the world.

All Startup Weekends follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams form around the top ideas as determined by a popular vote….then it’s on to a 54-hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekend culminates with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback. The winner is picked and comes away with a fabulous array of prizes designed to encourage additional development of the business. You could be off and running with that idea that’s been deep seeded in the back of your mind for some time to come!

Written by Sylvia Guzman, UMaine student and Startup Weekend volunteer

Startup Weekend is a 3-day event focused on jump-starting ideas for new businesses, and and it’s coming to town September 19-21! The event will start at Bagel Central in Downtown Bangor on Friday night, then move to the University of Maine campus on Saturday and Sunday. On campus, the event will be hosted at the Foster Center for Student Innovation (FCSI) and the Innovative Media Research and Commercialization (IMRC) Center.

Startup Weekends take place around the globe, but what makes this one unique is available access to the IMRC Center. The IMRC Center offers comfortable, state of the art prototyping facilities, audio and video production spaces, a resource library, performance and installation spaces, classrooms, and offices. The space and equipment is available to rent by any community member, but for Startup Weekend participants, the IMRC Center is generously making its facilities available for free.

Some of the tools include:

A full wood shop

3D printers and 3D scanner

A laser cutter/engraver

Large format printers

A range of design and production software

Electronics workbenches

Video and still cameras

Audio recording and mixing equipment

There is also equipment available for checkout such as:

Professional photography camera kits and accessories

Camcorders

Projectors

Laptops

Recorder kits

iPods

Headphones

Instruments

New media software

If you’ve heard of some of the equipment mentioned above but don’t know how to utilize it, have no fear! There will be lab technicians on site to assist and walk you through on how to use them! So come and be part of this amazing weekend full of energy, diversity, and exciting ideas where potential startups will be shared! And if you’re already registered to be a participant don’t forget to pass by the Immerse Center and checkout its facilities to get your startup going!

Startup Weekend is generously supported by our sponsors: the City of Bangor, Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, Emera Maine, Blackstone Accelerates Growth, Maine Technology Institute, the University of Maine IMRC and FCSI, and the Orono Economic Development Corp.

That was the story of my life until the first Startup Weekend came to Maine in 2013. In that single 54-hour weekend, I worked with a group of people I’d never met to take an idea from concept to reality. I learned about pitching, forming teams, marketing, finances, legal considerations, prototyping, testing, iterating, pivoting, and other steps that go into launching a business venture. I learned by experiencing them first-hand rather than sitting through a lecture or reading a book. It’s time to bring Startup Weekend to Bangor! We have the people, the infrastructure, and the energy! A team of volunteers from the greater Bangor community is organizing the event. Two of the organizers, Gerry Hall and myself, attended the first Startup Weekend Portland in 2013 and are excited to help bring one to our region. The first Startup Weekend Bangor is scheduled for… Read More